Taylor Shellfish and Chemicals on their Willapa Bay Shellfish Beds - It's not just imidacloprid.

Imidacloprid is only one in a long string

of pesticides and herbicides having been

applied to Willapa Bay shellfish beds
with Taylor Shellfish's consent and support. 

"We were able to control the japonica this year [2014],” 
[Bill] Taylor said. “We were able to get a permit
to use a chemical called Imazamox, 

and we were able to control it on a larger scale 

than had been controlled before. It was very successful."

(The Daily Astorian, January 8, 2015)

Taylor Shellfish and other Willapa Bay growers
now want more - spray 3,000+ Acres
and let it rot in place.

Meanwhile, the Puget Sound Restoration Fund

raises $1.5 million to grow and harvest seaweed, 

and on May 5th ask for more.

Board members Bill Taylor, and their attorney

Billy Plauche, instead want to grow and harvest.

What's really inside that Shigoku box?

The recent withdrawal of a permit to spray the neurotoxin imidacloprid onto the shellfish beds in Willapa Bay has brought to light two very different sides of the shellfish industry. On the outside is a finely crafted image based on decades of effort partnering with others to help ensure Washington's marine waters are healthy, something we all want. On the inside is the ongoing support of many growers to apply chemicals to those same marine waters and tidelands most are trying to keep chemicals out of and off of. Like a Shigoku oyster, it may look nice on the outside, but on the inside it's a non-native Pacific oyster, grown in a "chemical soup" (see below). You can't be both for clean waters and then turn around and spray those very same waters.

What a nice box.

Are the contents from Willapa Bay?

DOE does not stand for the Department of Economics.

Behind all spraying of herbicides and pesticides into Washington's marine waters is the Department of Ecology who requires permits before application may occur. As any agency required to issue permits, there is a balancing act required. In this case, on the one hand is consideration of the ecology and the on the other economics. A political entity will always be subject to political pressures and those political pressures are always strongest when an industry is flush with cash and motivated to acquire more. It is why the risk of DOE tipping the scales of environmental protection towards an industry's needs always exists. This is political reality and, coupled with the press for clean waters, is why the shellfish industry was able to obtain permits for application of imidacloprid and now imazamox. It was political and economic reality, with seeing what the industry defines clean water as, which caused both DOE and Taylor Shellfish, with the other growers, to withdraw the permit to apply imidacloprid.

"Quite honestly, it's blind faith that we're going on this," 

said Bill Dewey, a manager at Taylor Shellfish Co. 

and lead negotiator for the growers.

(The Daily News, April 30, 2003 on phasing out Carbaryl)

Blind faith is believing "Willapa Bay, is the cleanest bay in the USA."

For decades DOE has approved the application of chemicals to Willapa Bay shellfish beds. After 50 years Carbaryl, the active ingredient in Bayers' Sevin, was finally brought to a stop after a settlement agreement between the shellfish growers and environmental groups in 2003. As Blind Faith sings in their song, come down of your thrown. Washington's Office of the Attorney General, in a summary judgement filing, called Willapa Bay a "chemical soup."

Two sides of the same bay

a "chemical soup"

(from Motion for Summary Judgement, December 2012, p. 32)

Willapa Bay, is the cleanest bay in the USA.

(willapa-oysters.com)

Market demands will overcome political realities - pesticides first, herbicides next

Consumers who were surprised at finding out that there was a proposal to spray pesticides on Willapa Bay shellfish beds brought pesticide application to a stop. After over 50 years of a pesticide being used which Bayer says "contains ingredients that are considered to be probable or suspected human carcinogens." It will be consumers who will bring the application of all chemicals on Willapa Bay shellfish beds to a stop. It's black and white. It is not chemophobic. It's doing what you say you believe in - keeping Washington's waters clean.